At Rolling Stone, "journalistic integrity" is an oxymoron. That's the upshot of the magazine's response to a 12,000 word report issued Monday (4/06) on the bogus story Rolling Stone published last November, which claimed a fraternity at the University of Virginia used gang rape as an initiation rite. The story was based on the unverified word of "Jackie," who claimed she was raped during a party for pledges at the Phi Kappa Psi house the night of Sept. 28, 2012. If Ms. Erdely or Rolling Stone had themselves checked the key details of Jackie's story, they'd have learned before publication there was no party at the Phi Kappa Psi house the night the rape allegedly occurred; that the fraternity rushes in the Spring. And if she or the magazine's fact checkers had contacted the three friends Jackie said would back up her story, they'd have learned her friends didn't, as the Washington Post found out when it talked to them after the story was published. Warning signs were ignored because Ms. Erdely wanted to write, and her editors wanted to print, a story supporting the narrative white fraternity boys are responsible for an "epidemic" of sexual assaults on college campuses. Neither Ms. Erdely nor her editors have expressed a word of contrition to the frat boys they smeared. They're sorry they got caught, not sorry for what they did.

Given the furor that's erupted, you'd think Indiana was the first state - not the 20th -- to pass a law to protect freedom of conscience. The Indiana law would permit discrimination against gays, said Apple CEO Tim Cook in the Washington Post. Singer Miley Cyrus and actor Ashton Kutcher said much the same thing, more crudely. Apple "will never tolerate discrimination," Mr. Cook said. Apple does business in 4 of the 10 countries where homosexuality is punishable by death; builds many of its products in China, where Christians are persecuted. But Mr. Cook is by no means the only hypocrite among critics of Indiana's law: Illinois passed its RFRA in 1998. State Sen. Barack Obama voted for it.  Indiana's law, like those in the other 19 states, mimics the 1993 federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which Congress approved nearly unanimously and proudly signed into law by Bill Clinton. "The anti-Indiana backlash is a perfect storm of hysteria and legal ignorance, supercharged by the particularly censorious self-righteousness of the Left," said National Review Editor Rich Lowry.  It's yet more evidence that lefties aren't "liberals" at all - they're fascists.

Who's been reading Hillary Clinton's email? "She thinks they're erased," said Bob Woodward of the Washington Post, whose reporting (with Carl Bernstein) brought the Watergate scandal to light. "The Chinese or Iranians probably have them." Hillary's private intelligence network reminds him of Iran Contra, and of the scandal involving ex-CIA officer Ed Wilson, who was convicted in 1983 of illegally selling weapons to Libya, said Jeff Gerth, who wrote with Sam Biddle an investigative report on it. Ms. Clinton conducted official business on a private server to evade the requirements of federal law.  But what's really bad about what Hillary did is private servers like hers are notoriously easy to hack. Her personal emails could have become "a priority target for foreign intelligence services," the chairmen of the Senate committees on Foreign Relations, Intelligence, and Homeland Security said in a letter to the State Department's inspector general. Her obsession with secrecy has caused some to call Hillary "the Democrats' Nixon." Which may be unfair to Nixon.

Monday (3/23) was the fifth anniversary of passage of Obamacare. Seven Democrat senators marked it by asking for delay of yet another provision of the law. Putting companies with 51 to 100 employees in the costlier "small group" market could be "harmful and disruptive," they said in a letter to HHS Secretary Silvia Burwell. The uninsured should be given another chance to avoid the fine for not having health insurance, three House Democrats said in a letter to President Obama in February. "If ObamaCare is so great, why do Democrats repeatedly try to hide its more unpleasant features?" Investors Business Daily asked then. Here are the lies President Obama told, which he assured us were true, before the law was passed:

A week after announcing his "Race Together" campaign, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz walked it back. His baristas no longer will write "Race Together" on the coffee cups of customers, or try to engage them in "conversations" about race relations in America. The response he got wasn't the applause Mr. Schultz was expecting.  Corey duBrowa, Senior Vice President of Global Communications, received so much negative feedback he deleted his Twitter account the day after the campaign was announced. PBS anchor Gwen Ifill, who is black, spoke for millions when she tweeted: "Honest to God, if you start to engage me in a race conversation before I've had my morning coffee, it will not end well." Schulz's "moral exhibitionism," as Mona Charen described it, did not end well because Americans have had it with liberal race-baiting racism.  Here's why...

According to Gallup’s annual poll, 38 percent of Americans are conservative, just 24 percent say they’re liberal. Yet liberals win elections far more often. The teapot tempest that erupted this week over Liz Mair illustrates one of the reasons why. In the likely event you’ve never heard of Liz, she’s an evidently highly regarded Republican political consultant with expertise in social media. Ms. Mair is also a woman of strong opinions, whose views on amnesty for illegal aliens, abortion and gay marriage many conservatives find distressing. Wisconsin Gov. Walker exposed himself as a secret squish by hiring Liz Mair, said, among others, Matt Boyle of Breitbart News and columnist Michelle Malkin. By accepting her resignation, Gov. Walker indicated he’s easy to push around, said, among others, Jonah Goldberg of National Review, Erick Erickson of Red State, and Michael van der Galien of PJ Media.

Who knew St. Patrick was Jewish? Tuesday, March 17 was a great day for the Irish, a greater day for Israelis; a bad day for the putz in the White House and for the Lying Swine; a very bad day for the mullahs in Tehran. Zero plans to punish Israel for voting for the guy he doesn't like. "Every single Obama failure... is followed by a Prolonged Snit," says Ace. That the White House was "doing its damndest to vilify him on the Sunday talk shows" indicates the carpet bombing of Sen. Tom Cotton, R-AR has failed, said William Bigelow of Breitbart News. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Monday the administration's request to lift the injunction issued by District Judge Andrew Hanen barring implementation of Zero's executive orders providing amnesty for illegal aliens. Hanen is peeved about having been lied to; may impose sanctions on the Justice Department. The EPA wants to regulate backyard barbecues; monitor how long hotel guests spend in the shower. It's "burning the Constitution," said liberal Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe. "Late Night" host Seth Meyers tried to ambush Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tex, Tuesday on "climate change." It did not go as planned. The Obama administration has shut down walk-in tax preparation centers where the IRS provided, for free, assistance in filling out their income tax forms to the poor and elderly, diverted the money to left wing nonprofits with ties to the administration.

Dr. George Logan of Germantown, Pa. took it upon himself to negotiate an end to our undeclared war with France, which peeved President John Adams. So in January, 1799, Congress passed the Logan Act, which forbids a citizen, "without the authority of the United States," to "engage in correspondence or intercourse" with a foreign government "in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States." There was one indictment under the Logan Act - in 1803 -- but no prosecutions. Unhinged Democrats resurrected the Logan Act from the musty pages of history after Sen. Tom Cotton, R-AR, wrote an "open" letter to the mullahs in Tehran (full text in the link) to remind them that if the Senate doesn't ratify it, any deal they make with President Obama will end when his term does. Sen. Cotton wrote it to shine a light on President Obama's willingness to permit Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, which at least 77 percent of Americans oppose, according to a Gallup poll in February. Mission accomplished - in large part because of the hysterical, hypocritical overreaction from Democrats.

The Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Foundation accepted huge contributions from foreign governments – including dictatorships hostile to America – while Hillary was secretary of state, the Wall Street Journal reported Feb. 17. Ms. Clinton conducted all of her official business on a private email server installed in her home in Chappaqua, New York, the New York Times reported March 2. Ms. Clinton seemed irritated to have to answer any questions about her conduct, cut them off after about 20 minutes. But in those 20 minutes, she dug the hole she was in deeper.

The House of Representatives passed a "clean" bill funding the Department of Homeland Security (a complete capitulation to the Democrats) Tuesday (3/3), even though more than two thirds of Republicans voted against it. I don't see how Speaker John Boehner can survive a defection of that magnitude. Bibi Netanyahu gave a boffo speech to a joint session of Congress Tuesday (3/3). Thanks to Zero's ham fisted efforts to stop it, Bibi's speech became a much bigger deal than it otherwise would have been. The "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" narrative of those protesting the shooting of Michael Brown is true - except for the "hands up, don't shoot" parts. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday on King v. Burwell, the lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of paying Obamacare subsidies to people who purchased policies on the federal exchange. The tenor of the questions he asked inclined observers left and right to think swing Justice Anthony Kennedy is likely to support the administration's position. Kennedy was giving the libs a head fake, David Catron thinks. Did you know that eating three meals a day is racist? Neither did I. With the revelation Monday that Hillary Clinton used a private email account on an insecure server located in her Chappaqua home -- which, experts say, almost certainly has been hacked by hostile foreign intelligence services -- to conduct most of her official business as secretary of state, she's stepped in a pile of doo doo so deep and smelly not even the Lying Swine may be able to save her. Panicking Democrats would like to go elsewhere, but there bench is too thin - so thin some are talking about bringing back Al Gore.

Normally what politicians say matters much less than what they do.  But sometimes at a critical moment in history, a great speech by a great leader can bolster resolve to do what must be done.

“Our policy… “is to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime,” said Winston Churchill on May 13,1940, three days after he’d replaced Neville Chamberlain as prime minister.

 “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender,” he said June 4.  After the war, in 1946 Sir Winston warned that “from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across (Europe).”

Details leaked this week of the deal President Obama wants to make with the mullahs in Iran.  The U.S. military no longer can fight two wars at the same time. Normally, what politicians say matters a whole lot less than what they do (or don't do). But there are times when a great speech by a great leader can bring clarity to the confused, hope to the despairing, bolster the resolve of a people to do what must be done at a critical moment in history. 2014 was the biggest year for terror in 45 years. The Conservative Political Action Conference began Thursday.  The most popular speaker so far has been Scott Walker.  Now that he's clearly the frontrunner, the Lying Swine have been going after him hammer and tongs.

Journalists incurious in 2008 about Barack Obama’s college grades, and how he got into Harvard Law School, or his associations with radical Islamists are morbidly curious about why Scott Walker dropped out of Marquette University, and with what he believes about evolution. “As Scott Walker mulls White House bid, questions linger over college exit,” wrote Paul Farenthold in the Washington Post Feb. 11. The questions linger only in Mr. Farenthold’s feverish imagination. Gov. Walker said left Marquette because the Red Cross offered him a good job. Unlike Barack Obama, he gave his college permission to release his academic records. He was a student in good standing when he left, Marquette confirmed. For conservatives, who value accomplishment, this is a non-issue. Scott Walker has had a successful career, despite not having a college diploma. Dropouts Steven Jobs (Apple) and Bill Gates (Microsoft) have done all right too. But for liberals, who value credentials, not having a college degree indicates stupidity (if the dropout is a Republican). The difference between credentials and actual knowledge and accomplishment was starkly illustrated last week by Deputy State Department spokesperson Marie Harf.

This might not be a good time to remind New Englanders digging out from a “Biblical” series of storms that a year ago this month a writer in the New York Times predicted “the end of snow.” In 8 of 14 winters since the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said “milder winter temperatures will decrease heavy snowstorms,” the snow extent in North America has been greater than average, according to the Global Snow Lab at Rutgers University. Last year was the earth’s warmest since 1880, said NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies Jan. 16. Which was odd, because according to the National Climatic Data Center, last winter was the coldest since 2009-2010; last summer the coolest since 2009. Temperatures recorded at stations of the Global Historical Climatology Network from Jan. 1 through May 6 were the lowest ever. How do the coldest winter and summer in four years, the coldest Spring ever recorded add up to the warmest year? They don’t.  Here's how science has disgraced itself with warmist deceit.

The brutal execution by ISIS of a Jordanian pilot has lit a fire under Jordan's King Abdullah, who has stepped up air strikes, moved "thousands" of troops to his border with Iraq. A graduate of the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, paratrooper and pilot, Abdullah, 53, was a major general commanding Jordan's special forces when he ascended to the throne in 1999. He's vowed "retribution like ISIS hasn't seen."  I wish our president had his stones. * * * * He doesn't, said the former editor of Ashar al-Awsat, an Arabic newspaper published in London. "Everyone knows the international anti-ISIS coalition is just a cover for the Obama administration's spineless reluctance to make any lasting decisions or take any real action in the Middle East," said Tariq Alhomayed. * * * * Zero is trying harder to defeat Bibi Netanyahu in the Israeli elections March 17 than to defeat ISIS, but his efforts appear to be backfiring. He's also failing to keep Bibi from speaking to a joint session of Congress. * * * * The White House had very specific intel about where ISIS was holding Western hostages, but a rescue mission failed because Obama  dithered for seven weeks before authorizing it. * * * * In remarks which even for him were breathtakingly ignorant, erroneous and offensive, President Barack Obama declared moral equivalence between Islamic extremism and Christianity. * * * * Must see tv this week is watching White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest and State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki get eaten alive as they try to defend President Obama's claim the murder of four Jews in a kosher deli in Paris the day after the Charlie Hebdo massacre was "random." * * * * Illinois' new Republican governor, Bruce Rauner, has issued an executive order to put an end to the requirement state employees in the Land of Lincoln pay union dues even if they don't join the union. * * * * The man who murdered "American Sniper" Chris Kyle wasn't suffering from PTSD. He may have been an Islamist seeking vengeance. * * * * John Judis, co-author of "The Emerging Democratic Majority" in 2002, has recanted. He now sees an "Emerging Republican Advantage."

The runaway box office success of "American Sniper," which chronicles the exploits of Chris Kyle, the Navy SEAL credited with more confirmed kills than any other sniper in U.S. history, has unhinged many liberals. After seeing the movie, I can understand why they're so upset. Actor Bradley Cooper and director Clint Eastwood have captured precisely what motivates "sheepdogs" like Chris Kyle. I was deeply moved, because I was a "sheepdog" once. Kyle  served four tours in Iraq chiefly because he wanted to protect as many Marines as he could from the vicious killers they were fighting.  After leaving the Navy in 2009, Kyle worked with veterans who had mental problems. On Feb. 2, 2013, he was murdered by one of the vets he was trying to help. His family says Eddie Routh has PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder). That's not likely, because he never saw combat.  There's disturbing evidence that Routh began sympathizing with the Moslem terrorist prisoners he guarded in Iraq.

Radical Islamists and Christians both have bloody hands, Barack Hussein Obama said at the National Prayer Breakfast Feb. 5. "Lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ," he said. "In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ." Mr. Obama's moral equivalence shocked even those accustomed to his habitual disregard for truth.   "To compare the depredations of the Islamic State with those of the Crusaders is patronizing in the extreme," said liberal Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson. It was like FDR saying he couldn't speak out against Hitler because of what we did to the Indians a century ago, said MSNBC talk show host Joe Scarborough. What Obama said was both patronizing and stupid, yes.  But was it also something worse?

From 1820 through 2000, America's real (inflation adjusted) gross domestic product grew at an average annual rate of 3.6 percent. Last year was the 9th consecutive year in which the economy grew less than 3 percent. Real GDP has grown 13.6 percent since the recovery officially began in June, 2009. The average rate of growth at this point in the recoveries from the four recessions since 1975 was 21.9 percent. If it weren't for gains made by the well off, there wouldn't be a "recovery." Five years after it began (by June 2014), the top 1 percent of earners (more than $366,623 a year) had garnered 81 percent of its fruits. The incomes of the top 1 tenth of 1 percent (about $8 million a year) grew 39 percent. The incomes of the bottom 90 percent of earners declined, according to a study by University of California-Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez. Real median household income was $54,417 in December, 5.1 percent lower than in January, 2008 ($57,317). The plain fact is that it is Mr. Obama's rules, regulations, and policies that are stifling our economy and job growth.  That's why, of course, he's lying about it.

The battle for the Republican nomination for president effectively began at the Iowa Freedom Summit in Des Moines Jan. 26-27. Twelve prospective candidates spoke at the Freedom Summit, a testament to the power Iowa wields by being the first to select delegates. I'm appalled by the wildly disproportionate influence the Iowa caucuses have, since only about 20 percent of those eligible attend them. But I don't mind so much this cycle, because Iowa figures to boost the guy I think is best able to unite the GOP; appeal to swing voters, do the best job as president. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker was the most impressive at the Freedom Summit, said pundits left and right. Iowans evidently agree. At 15 percent, he was the top first choice of respondents in a Des Moines Register poll last week, tied with neurosurgeon Ben Carson for top 2nd choice (10 percent). He was a runaway winner in an online poll conducted for the Drudge Report this week. Most prospective GOP candidates really are running 1) for vice president; 2) to send a message; 3) to boost their lecture fees and/or massage their egos. Among those running for vice president (whether they know it or not) are...

As I was shoveling great gobs of it from my driveway this week, I remembered that Porter Fox, writing in the New York Times last February, predicted "the end of snow." Last winter was the coldest on record for much of the country. At least a dozen cities reported more than twice as much snowfall as normal, AccuWeather said. The record for "major impact" snowstorms in a decade on the East Coast, set in the 1960s, was 10. We've already had 14 such storms in this decade, noted meteorologist Joe D'Aleo.  Note that this decade is only half over. One of those 14 was last weekend, mere days after EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said "climate change" could put an end to winter sports.  Welcome to Warmism, the greatest snow job in history.

"Sleeper cells" like the one that attacked the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo are here, says Sen. Dianne Feinstein, former chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. ISIS has sleeper cells in America, says former CIA officer Bob Baer. So does Iran, says former CIA operative "Reza Kahlili." "Another 9/11 is imminent unless we act decisively, and quickly," former CENTCOM adviser Ali Khedery warned President Barack Obama in August. Terror attacks rose sharply during the insurgency in Iraq, fell after it was crushed by the troop surge, have skyrocketed since 2011. Deaths from terror rose 41 percent in 2012, 61 percent in 2013. The spike coincides with the president's feckless efforts to woo Islamists; dithering over the civil war in Syria; belated recognition of and piddling response to the threat posed by ISIS. Diminishing when Mr. Obama assumed office, the terror threat now is rising faster than the capacity of security agencies to cope with it, some experts fear.  Is Mr. Obama merely incompetent or insouciant, or is he pro-terrorist?  Let's count the ways...

Little illustrates more clearly the large and expanding gulf between ordinary Americans and liberal elitists than their responses to two movies out this month. "American Sniper," the Clint Eastwood film based on the autobiography of Chris Kyle, the former Navy SEAL who is credited with more confirmed kills (160) than any other sniper in U.S. history, was a box office smash when it opened last weekend. Mr. Kyle left the Navy in 2009. A month after his autobiography was published in 2012, he was murdered at a firing range in Texas by a former Marine he'd befriended, who apparently was suffering from PTSD. Taya Kyle, Chris Kyle's widow, said actor Bradley Cooper and the film's writers and producers have portrayed him accurately. NRO's David French explains why the movie is a  cultural game-changer that millions of normal Americans are flocking to see.  Chris Kyle is the true American war hero of our day, as Alvin York was for WWI and Audie Murphy for WWII. And that's why liberal elitists hate it.

When 44 world leaders joined 1.6 million Parisians to condemn Islamist terror last Sunday (1/11), President Barack Hussein Obama and Vice President Joe Biden were watching football. Secretary of State John Kerry was in India (where it's been unseasonably cold), to give a speech on...what else?.. global warming. Attorney General Eric Holder was in Paris, but didn't attend because he was in "high level meetings," aides said. With whom? Nearly every prominent French official was at the rally. There were fewer Obama officials at the rally than have appeared in episodes of the CBS show "The Good Wife," noted an "ashamed" Jake Tapper of CNN. The absence of senior U.S. officials gives tacit support to the Charlie Hebdo killers, says retired Army intelligence officer Ralph Peters: "Passivity in the face of terror is complicity." It's appalling if the White House didn't grasp the symbolic importance of U.S. participation; more appalling if the snub were deliberate.  More likely is the latter.

"Allahu Akbar!" (God is greater), shouted the terrorists who attacked the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. "We have avenged the Prophet Mohammed." The terrorists weren't Moslems, because Islam is a religion of peace, said President Barack Obama. The United States needs to "redouble" efforts to explain "what the tenets of Islam actually are," said White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest. "Islam teaches peace," the president said at the UN last September. "Islam" means peace, he and like-minded liberals often have said. No it doesn't, said Anjem Choudary, imam of a mosque in London. "Islam does not mean peace but rather means submission to the commands of Allah alone," Mr. Choudary writes in USA Today (1/07). "Therefore, Moslems do not believe in the concept of freedom of expression, as their speech and actions are determined by divine revelation and not based on people's desires."

What's most significant about the new 114th Congress is Democrats no longer can block votes on popular reform bills the House passes, says columnist Charles Krauthammer. "The days of hiding under Harry Reid's desk are over." Journalists would rather talk about dissension among Republicans. Even before the new Senate was sworn in, there were stories about how hard it may be for the GOP to keep control in 2016.  You wouldn't know from reading them that it's the Democrats who are at death's door. They've become a party defined by desperation.  To maintain their slipping grip on power, Democrats make ever more baldly racist appeals. They smear police, side with protesters who disrupt the lives of ordinary Americans, make excuses for rioting and looting. Given that, I might as well tell you what I really think:  Democrats today remind me of insects.

Jeb Bush is the "clear frontrunner" for the Republican nomination for president, prominent pundits say. Evidently these pundits don't know many Republicans. Not that Jeb is an implausible candidate. He was arguably the best governor in America during his 8 years in Florida (Jan, 1999--Jan, 2007), left office with high approval ratings. Florida, with 29 electoral votes, is the 4th largest state, by far the largest swing state. Barack Hussein Obama won it narrowly in 2008 and 2012. A Republican must carry Florida to be elected president. But Jeb Bush has been out of office for 8 years, an eternity in politics. He's old news now, and Republicans have never been as fond of the dynasty thing as are Democrats. Jeb led New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, 23 percent to 13 percent, in a CNN/ORC poll Dec. 18-21. Pundits treated this as if it were a very big deal. It isn't.  Here's why.

When People magazine asked Michelle Obama about her personal experience with racism, she cited a 2011 visit to a Target store in Virginia. "The only person who came up to me in the store was a woman who asked me to help her take something off a shelf," the First Lady said. Why is it "racist" for a short white woman to ask a taller woman (Ms. Obama is 5'11") who happens to be black to get a box of detergent for her from a high shelf? The First Lady's anecdote illustrates how difficult it is to find evidence for the charge many liberals make that racism and sexism are as rampant in America today as half a century ago.

The assassination of John F. Kennedy was fostered by the "climate of hate" created by conservative critics of the president in Dallas, many liberals said. The assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was a communist from New Orleans, so this was a stretch. Sarah Palin's "inflammatory rhetoric" was to blame for the shooting in Tucson in January, 2011, in which Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz, was severely wounded, and six who'd come to hear her were killed, many liberals said. The shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, was mentally ill, had no ties to conservative groups, no political motive for the shooting. You'd look in vain to find conservative incendiary rhetoric inciting conservative violence, but it's easy to find regarding Democrats.  Now, in the wake of the murder of two New York City police officers Saturday (12/20), prominent Democrats are fearful Americans will hold them accountable for the consequences of their "climate of hate."

There's one chance in four a coed will be raped before she graduates from college, feminists say. Which is like saying the earth is flat, the sun revolves around it, the moon is made of camembert. Only about two percent of rape charges are false, feminists claim. That number originated in Susan Brownmiller's 1975 book, "Against Our Will." She offered no evidence to substantiate it. No study ever has, said Edward Greer in a law review article. The worse the crime, the more vile are those who make false accusations of it. That applies to feminists in spades.

"How many legs does a calf have, if you call the tail a leg?" Abraham Lincoln asked a Congressman during a discussion of whether he had the authority to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. "Five," the Congressman replied. "Four," Lincoln corrected him. "Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg." We can assume that Lincoln would similarly correct Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee who have as expansive a definition of "torture," as he would those feminists who include consensual sex in their definition of "rape." Foremost of the "tortures" Democrats decried in a 500 page report was the waterboarding of three senior al Qaida leaders. CIA interrogators were themselves waterboarded before using the technique on terrorists. Grandstanding journalists have volunteered to be waterboarded to "prove" it's torture. Which should prove conclusively it isn't. No journalist has ever volunteered to have his fingernails pulled out.

The testimony Monday (12/8) of Jonathan Gruber, professor of economics at MIT and a leading architect of Obamacare, posed a delicate problem for ABC, CBS, and, especially, NBC News. The House Oversight Committee wanted to hear more from Prof. Gruber about how the administration deceived Congress, CBO and the American people to get Obamacare passed. The hearing was great theater. "Gruber groveled. Gruber regretted. Gruber apologized. Gruber was sorry," said Scott Johnson of the Power Line blog. "He squirmed. He dodged. He apologized," said Politico. The problem for the broadcast networks was how to explain to their viewers who Gruber is and why he was squirming, dodging and groveling, because before Monday, they'd reported next to nothing about the things he'd said.

Of 1,265 people killed in St. Louis between 2003 and 2012, 1,138 (89.9%) were black.  90% of them were killed by other blacks. Thirty two of them were killed by police officers; 22 of those 32 (1.93% of 1,138) by white cops. To assert - as the Obama administration and so many in the news media have - that racially motivated shootings by police are commonplace, and this was one of them - is vile. Even more despicable are those who've made excuses for what took place after the grand jury refused to indict Officer Wilson for a crime it was clear he hadn't committed.  Rioters and looters - who destroyed mostly black businesses and burned down a black church - aren't "protesters" who are "trying to make their voices heard."  They're criminals. And they are Obama's legacy.

In Moore, Oklahoma Sept. 26, Alten Nolen, 30, beheaded Colleen Hufford, 54. He was trying to behead a second woman when he was shot. A convert to Islam, Mr. Nolen had posted a grisly photo of a beheading on his Facebook page. "Kill the disbeliever, whether he is civilian or military," an Islamic State leader urged supporters in the West five days before Mr. Nolen cut off Ms. Hufford's head. Her murder was "workplace violence," said the FBI. Which is how the Obama administration characterized the 2009 murders of 13 soldiers at Fort Hood by Nidal Malik Hasan, who was shouting "Allahu Akbar" as he gunned them down. In the report of the 911 Commission, the word "Islam" appears 322 times, "Muslim" 145 times, "jihad" 126 times. But in the national intelligence strategy the Obama administration issued in 2009, those words don't appear at all, noted Katherine Gorka of the Council on Global Security. To know your enemy is the key to victory, said Sun Tzu (544-496 BC). We're losing a war all but won when President Obama took the oath of office because of his bizarre refusal to recognize our enemy.

Only 36 percent of Americans expressed approval of Democrats in a Gallup poll Nov. 12, the lowest in the 22 years Gallup has been asking that question. Republicans were approved of by 42 percent. In Gallup's poll 13 months ago, 43 percent had approved of Democrats, just 28 percent of the GOP. To understand how Democrats could fall so far so fast, consider MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, to whom the Obama administration paid $400,000 to help design Obamacare. Prof. Gruber thinks he's very smart, and you aren't. "(Obamacare) was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies," he said during a health care conference at the University of Pennsylvania in October of last year. "Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage," Mr. Gruber said.

This has been a terrible week for Democrats, because of the loose lips of an Obamacare architect who couldn't resist bragging to his fellow liberal elitists about he and the rest of the White House gang bamboozled Congress and the "stupid" American people. Even former White House Press Secretary Jay Carney thinks Jonathan Gruber is an ass. He's become such a liability Democrats are pretending they never heard of him. But they can't escape from their tar baby. * * * * Zero has made it clear he intends to do precisely the opposite of what Americans want him to do, which signals many more terrible weeks ahead for Democrats. Especially for Hillary Clinton. * * * * After secret negotiations, President Obama made a deal with China on "climate change." It's "historic," a "game changer," say most in the MSM. But Foreign Policy magazine wonders: "Why is Beijing downplaying the supposedly huge climate change deal? * * * * Zero also has been conducting secret negotiations with Iran. It speaks volumes about the parlous state our country is in that the president is more eager to deal with the mullahs than with Republicans. * * * * The runoff in the Louisiana senate race is becoming a laugher, an internal poll indicates. "Landrieu should save everyone a lot of money and just concede now," tweeted uber leftist Markos Moulitsas. * * * * President Obama plans to issue an executive order granting amnesty to about five million illegal immigrants by the end of next week, reported Fox News. The New York Times confirmed. This is actually good news, because it will unify Republicans in opposition to the president. House Speaker John Boehner, R-OH, promised Thursday to fight it "tooth an nail."  And Americans will be royally peeved.